Introduction
Back in early 2018, the Recurve RDA (along with the Wasp RDA) were mainstream single-coil kings.
Fast forward to 2022, pod systems, pod-mods and mesh coils have taken over vaping – so I am very grateful that mainstream companies are still releasing conventional rebuildable atomizers such as the Recurve V2.
Product overview
The Recurve V2 is a 24mm RDA with a postless deck and two airflow adapters designed to cater for both dual and single-coil builds.
More images are here
What do you get?
Unlike the Recurve dual, the V2 does actually have a curve to the barrel, although not as pronounced as on the original Recurve.
Airflow is obviously very different, with a honeycomb adapter hiding behind a series of three horizontal slots on the side of the barrel.
The big deal with this RDA are the two airflow adapters, and this is where I have my first concern with the RDA – the airflow adapters are secured on the deck with two tiny pins – these pins look prone to breaking at some point. Mine have zero signs of damage, but I’ve only had this RDA for about a month.
O-ring tolerances felt good until...well more on that later.
Build
How does it perform?
From the outside, the two airflow adapters look quite similar, with the one designed for single-coil having a slightly more narrow bore, however once you turn them over it becomes apparent that the single-coil adapter pushes the airflow much closer to the coils.
I tried a couple of the builds without either adapter and the flavor was very muted, so the adapters are certainly doing their job.
Airflow
Slots leading to honeycomb – of course it’s smooth. Most of the time, I found fully open to be too much airflow, one slot closed was perfect most of the time, giving a nice, slightly restricted draw.
To drip or to squonk
My experiences with dripping and squonking on the Recurve V2 were polar opposites.
Dripping is annoying because you get pools of liquid under the coil, leading to spit-back, so you decide to remove the cap and paint the coils/wicks – then you have to remove the juice covered airflow adapter that makes everything messy.
Squonking on the other hand is excellent, your juice is sitting in the bottom of the well, so almost nothing pools under the coils and everything works perfectly.
What could be improved?
This is a hard one, because under certain circumstances the Recurve V2 performs really well, but under other circumstances it’s less than ideal.
As a dripper, I can’t really recommend it, however as a squonk RDA it’s pretty awesome, no matter if you go for single or dual-coil builds.
Disclaimer
The Recurve RDA V2 was provided for the purposes of this review by Wotofo.
Back in early 2018, the Recurve RDA (along with the Wasp RDA) were mainstream single-coil kings.
Fast forward to 2022, pod systems, pod-mods and mesh coils have taken over vaping – so I am very grateful that mainstream companies are still releasing conventional rebuildable atomizers such as the Recurve V2.
Product overview
The Recurve V2 is a 24mm RDA with a postless deck and two airflow adapters designed to cater for both dual and single-coil builds.
More images are here
What do you get?
- Recurve V2 RDA (with dual-coil airflow adapter fitted)
- 1×5mm dual core fused clapton 0.65ohm
- 1×5mm cotton thread
- 2×3mm framed staple clapton 0.33ohm
- 2×3mm cotton thread
- single-coil airflow adapter
- 3mm/5mm coiling rod
- accessories/tools/spares
Unlike the Recurve dual, the V2 does actually have a curve to the barrel, although not as pronounced as on the original Recurve.
Airflow is obviously very different, with a honeycomb adapter hiding behind a series of three horizontal slots on the side of the barrel.
The big deal with this RDA are the two airflow adapters, and this is where I have my first concern with the RDA – the airflow adapters are secured on the deck with two tiny pins – these pins look prone to breaking at some point. Mine have zero signs of damage, but I’ve only had this RDA for about a month.
O-ring tolerances felt good until...well more on that later.
Build
- Coiling – it’s a standard postless RDA deck, just cut the coils to 7-8mm using the supplied coil measurement tool and drop them in, nothing special or tricky required for the coils. If you’re not sure about the coil height, then you can put on the barrel and see where the coil lines up with the slots – the slots are directly in line with the honeycomb airflow.
- Wicking – for certain builds and more so for dripping, it’s good to separate the wicks where they enter the juice well, due to juice pooling up under the coil and not being able to drop into the juice well.. This is simple with dual-coil builds, however with single-coil builds you may need to split the wicks with scissors.
How does it perform?
- single 3.0mm 28g fused clapton 0.38ohm - at around 40-45w with the single-coil airflow adapter install and the top row of airflow closed down, this build gave nice flavor, but I got the feeling that it had far more to give with a bigger coil. There was noticeable spit-back, especially when dripping with this coil.
- single 3.5mm 24g fused clapton 0.32ohm - due to the spitback with the previous coil, I spaced this coil. While the first build was good, this build was a much better vape, at around 50w with the top row of airflow closed down, the flavor was great and vapor production was increased a lot. This was my favorite build in this RDA.
- single 5.0mm 26g fused claptop 0.6ohm - obviously a much bigger coil requires more power, so I ran this at around 70-85w, this is the only single-coil build that I enjoyed with the dual-coil airflow adapter, but overall I preferred it with the single-coil adapter. This gave a lot more vapor than the previous builds, but I enjoyed the flavor with the smaller single-coil builds more, especially the 3.5mm 24g fused clapton.
- dual 3.0mm framed staple claptons 0.18ohms at 75w and above this build performed really well, it’s the only build that I enjoyed with the airflow fully open – it didn’t give me better flavor than the single-coil builds, but it gave me more flavor and good vapor production. For a dual-coil build, this was a very nice vape, it’s just that I prefer single-coil.
From the outside, the two airflow adapters look quite similar, with the one designed for single-coil having a slightly more narrow bore, however once you turn them over it becomes apparent that the single-coil adapter pushes the airflow much closer to the coils.
I tried a couple of the builds without either adapter and the flavor was very muted, so the adapters are certainly doing their job.
Airflow
Slots leading to honeycomb – of course it’s smooth. Most of the time, I found fully open to be too much airflow, one slot closed was perfect most of the time, giving a nice, slightly restricted draw.
To drip or to squonk
My experiences with dripping and squonking on the Recurve V2 were polar opposites.
Dripping is annoying because you get pools of liquid under the coil, leading to spit-back, so you decide to remove the cap and paint the coils/wicks – then you have to remove the juice covered airflow adapter that makes everything messy.
Squonking on the other hand is excellent, your juice is sitting in the bottom of the well, so almost nothing pools under the coils and everything works perfectly.
What could be improved?
- Airflow adapters – while the airflow adapters certainly help the performance, they look flimsy and get covered in juice, which makes removing them a messy process. Two top-caps would have been a more costly, but probably a better solution. As it stands, just be careful with the adapters.
- O-rings – the O-rings holding the barrel in place are far too loose once the RDA gets juicy, this is an easy fix, I took some slightly thicker O-rings for the spares bag of another atomizer and now it’s perfect. My Recurve was quite possible a pre-production version as I received it very early, Wotofo may have solved this issue by now.
- Pools of juice – the deck is like a bowl, so juice naturally forms a pool in the middle of the deck, which leads to a lot of spit-back with certain builds when dripping, it’s far less of an issue when squonking. There are many postless designs that don’t result in pooling juice, so I wonder why they went for this design.
This is a hard one, because under certain circumstances the Recurve V2 performs really well, but under other circumstances it’s less than ideal.
As a dripper, I can’t really recommend it, however as a squonk RDA it’s pretty awesome, no matter if you go for single or dual-coil builds.
Disclaimer
The Recurve RDA V2 was provided for the purposes of this review by Wotofo.